Notices by K~ (karadoc@aus.social)

@cwebber I think calling them a 'surveillance company' kind of buries the lede.

People use chatbots to ask questions, to learn new 'facts' about the world. The chatbots are confident and persuasive, and talking to people who are ready to believe what they are told.

So these huge powerful companies running the cloud AI chatbots don't just surveil to learn about their users; they are also in a position to steer and manipulate people on a massive scale. This could be very subtle, or it could be quite blunt. (I'd say that Grok is very obviously intended as a manipulation tool; but perhaps not obviously enough!)

@dalias

Why would you assume that their slip-up was about a hidden inner evil, rather than *literally anything else*?

Have you never in your life said something that you regret? Misspoke? Misread a situation and chose your words poorly? Missed some nuance in what you were saying and ended up conveying the wrong idea? These things have happened to me, and to basically everyone I know. I can imagine that also happen to people volunteering their time to make a web browser too.

So in the absence of other evidence, I think it really is safe to assume that not immediately updating the documentation for their work probably does *not* mean that they are secretly nazis. Seriously. There are countless other interpretations that do not require drawing such a long bow. And there are enough real nazis in the world that we don't have to shadowbox with imaginary ones.

@dalias @stovis @Siilwyn @kboyd @herzmut @vkc
So, because they didn't immediately changing the wording of their documentation when asked - the whole project is permanently dead to you. Ouch.

If even the slightest temporary misstep is enough to kill the reputation of any new project, then there isn't really any hope for positive change.

Real humans are generally not perfect; especially when they don't have a full-time media-management team.

The ladybird team made a mistake. It was a minor mistake. They have acknowledged it and corrected it. Surely that's enough. Right?

@solene That's seriously messed up.

This is one of the kinds of problems that can appear when certain products become dominant. And it further entrenches the power of mega-corps. I hate it.